Chapter 10: Kiddieland Used To Be There
A small boy toddled up to the dusty play set. His chest pushed outward, and up his throat the hollowness crept. But he didn’t want to cry. His name was Billy, and he was small for his age. Small in all ways; a really tiny boy. His age was six years, but he could easily pass for three, and a tiny three at that. And contrary to what you’re probably thinking, he wasn’t some kind of computer genius or math wizard. He couldn’t even read. Billy had to rely pretty much on emotion to guide his path; that’s how he negotiated life. Not because he was especially noble, but, like I said, that’s all he could really do. Emotional sensitivity was his default mode. It just happened to be a rare ability in life.
He stood on a railroad tie that was part of a border around the play set. Inside the circular rim was crusty, hard-packed dirt. It used to be sand. Bill loved the sand. Especially on sunny days Ooooh, it would get so warm! He would come down here quite a bit last summer and fall, and take off his pants and shirt, just laying bare-fleshed in the sand, so warm and cuddly. Most people didn’t realize that dirt could be cuddly; boy were they missing out.
But Billy hadn’t been to the playground in a whole year, not since last October, and now it was September again. He’d missed a whole summer. The whole time he was away--at least, the part that was warm, starting in maybe April or May--he’d thought about his playground. He was worried it was wondering where he was. And it was. Hardly anyone ever came here except him. So once he went away and didn’t come back for so long, things just kind of went down hill. The playground, the play set, let themselves go with nobody to care for them.
Billy stepped down off the railroad tie, toward the slide. It was sagging to the left now, and he was sure it had not been before, when he was here last October. I am so sorry, Billy thought. He went over to the slide, his miniscule little bare feet ouching on the crunchy dried ground. He touched the metal; ran his hand slowly down the silvery surface. It felt very unslippery and a little rough. Billy was pretty sure it must have been crying for a very long time to get that kind of texture going.
A wind stirred up, cold, from the north. A nor’easter. Billy put his little right foot over top his little left one for warmth. Then a paper blew over from near the waste can, and up to stick to the side of Billy’s cantaloupe sized head. He pulled it off and looked at it. A page full of words. Tons of words had been written on the sheet of typewriter paper, handwritten in blue ink. Mostly printing, some cursive. Every speck of paper had been covered, all smashed in to the corners, and what had been the margins earlier on in the writing. Both sides of the page, too. It looked like it had started out as a letter--Billy could recognize the shape--but then got all smashed in to cover every inch of white space. Even every millimeter, and less. In the teeny tiny places where words left small white gaps here and there, little faces had been drawn in with a pencil. Some of them were kind of smudgy now, and they were all supremely small. It must have been a very sharp pencil, Billy thought. It had, in actuality, been a mechanical pencil, but he’d never seen one of those.
Wow, this is pretty neat, he thought, turning the paper over in his hands. The mystery of it all took away a bit of the sadness edge that hung heavy between him and the play set. Both so blue, so down. Each wishing better for the other, and not quite able to make the difference necessary to turn the tides.
Billy sat down on the end of the slide, climbing up with his hands and knees to get there, then twisting around to sit Indian style on the end. He tucked his little feet under him, feeling the temperature dropping by degrees.
He looked again at the letter, or whatever it was. It was so intriguing. Who had written this? What was the purpose? Where they missing it, looking all over the place for all these words they’d written down? He sensed, rightly, that the words were about feelings, had a lot of emotion in them. Somebody felt a lot of stuff when they wrote all this. He tried to figure out anything he could about the person. He sort of thought it might have been a girl, but realized that he could be stereotyping, since girls mostly wrote notes and stuff at school. At least they did in his experience. Boys, not so much. Even the boys who talked, who were more normal than Billy, at his school were not very much into writing. The teacher, Miss Grove, hardly even made them do any English kind of work. One boy had wanted to do some poetry, and she’d slammed his fingers in his desk, calling him ‘faggy.’
Billy wished he could read. He was really interested in what this paper said. It wasn’t often he saw people outside his ma and pa, except for at school. His friends were a handful of trees, his cat, this old playground. The area he lived in was rural, but more than the acres between himself and other people, the invisible wall of his family kept him invisible to everyone nearby. They were consciously invisible to the town, the neighboring farms, even his school marm. No electricity or plumbing; that could have been dealt with in the charity way of small communities. But his parents, no way. The family was ignored like a pile of shit in a flower garden. Or some other more appropriate metaphor, where a matter of disgust is a part of the landscape that cannot be remedied, and so is blanked out, ignored, not thought of to the point that it becomes invisible.
Chapter 13: Dirt Cheap
Billy kept the paper; it felt like a friend. He folded it up on the lines already creased into it, pleased to see that it made itself into a little envelope. He tucked the flap in and put it down deep into his pants pocket and started back home.
The air was whipping pretty cold now. Billy decided to take the road home, because it was smoother (hard packed dirt) than the shorter trail through woods, where sticks and stuff would poke into his feet. Funny, that when it was warm enough, he could walk barefoot over just about anything with no problem, but when his feet were cold, every little rock or twig seemed to dig in hard. Maybe they were trying to get inside his feet, inside his body, where it was warmer.
He turned around for a last look at his friend the play set, and promised it he would be back soon, just like he always used to be, every day after school and usually on Saturdays. Then he started left around a thicket where the path started, and padded lightly over the gravel parking area to the road. Turning right, he stayed close to the edge of the road, just in case, even though hardly anybody ever drove down here. Only three farms down this way, unless you were taking an extremely long way around to the city, which sometimes cars full of teenagers did in the middle of the day. But today was a regular weekday in fall, almost dark already at 5:00.
Billy was not afraid of the dark. He liked the dark just like he liked the sunlight, only in different ways. The darkness was a blanket, a place he could cuddle up inside of and be left alone. It was hard for people to find you in the dark. It was hard for his dad to find him in the dark. And on nights when he was drinking and had a particular mood going, Billy was glad to have the dark for just that reason.
He veered over to the ditch and pulled a cat tail loose; something to play with on his walk home. He liked their fuzziness and firmness, like a Lincoln Log kitten, or one that had grown mold. Mold was really something that had been there for Billy in a perhaps odd, but very comforting way. It had served the purpose that a pet does for many children: signs of growth with proper care, soft, easy. And there was plenty of it around. The mold that had been with Billy the longest was on orange juice. He had to keep it fed, because otherwise the juice evaporated, leaving the mold starving to death in a layer at the top of the glass.
The rumbling crunch of a car coming up behind him. Billy stepped carefully through the weeds on the shoulder and crouched down low in them. He was right: it was his Dad’s truck. The truck zoomed by, kicking up dust and leaves and few small pebbles, on of which shot Billy in the left arm like a b.b. Dang, he was hoping Dad wouldn’t be back so soon. He’d been away for over a week this time, and it felt good.
The dad was a creepy dude. Kids in Billy’s class were afraid of Billy’s dad, and many had nightmares about him. He was the Bogeyman, and they knew it. Kids knew these things, even if the adults got them to pretend they ‘knew better.’ The adults didn’t even know how to process him in their worlds, so they mostly just kept his data out; he did not compute, so, he wasn’t really there in their heads to think about. When their children woke up crying, saying Billy’s dad was trying to get them, or when they ran home in a panic from playing, saying the Bogeyman had just driven by and looked at them with an evil eye, the parents usually gave patient lectures about how Some People live, and just because the man is dirty and poor doesn’t mean he is necessarily bad. This they would do the first couple times their child flipped a lid about Billy’s dad. Too many times, and it pressured the vault of their brains that kept unpleasant, distasteful facts locked up, which made the adults cranky, and they would snap things at their kids like ‘One more word out of you and no Playstation!’ or ‘Get outside and play’ or ‘Go back to sleep.’ It was things kinds of things that wreaked havoc on the children’s developing system of neurotransmitters, and their grasp on reality and how it all worked. Because they knew--KNEW--that they guy was more monster than human, yet apparently the adults could not see this clearly. It was a lonely feeling, indeed, to be the only ones who know about an evil bogeyman when you’re just kids.
Some of the bigger kids thought something should be done to get rid of him.
“We got to kill him,” Butch Baskin said one Friday on the playground, after Sara Gold swore Billy’s dad had been scraping at her bedroom window the night before. She’d screamed and ran in to her parents’ room, but not fast enough to avoid seeing the bloody stuff hanging around the edges of his mouth. Reports like this of Billy’s dad described something that did not look quite human.
Chapter 16: Dirty Deeds
The Dunder Chief sat back on his haunches in the shed out back of his house, behind the outhouse and down the hill several feet. The shed, like the house, was a weathered wood so old and uncared for that it blended with the trunks of the leafless fall trees in perfect harmony. Nobody would look for him, but if anyone ever tried, they’d walk right by this camouflaged shed.
In his claw hands, he held the last of Toby Crane--his right leg--and took a slurpy bite from the fleshy thigh. He loved fat kids. Just like with steak, the fat held all the flavor.
The Dunder Chief worked on the kneecap now, scraping the tender flesh off with his multi-colored teeth, shades of grey and smoky mustard seed yellows grinding against the puck-sized kneecap. It had been a huge risk taking this kid so close to home; the most foolhardy meal he’d snatched in his life. But it had been over six months since his last child, and this boy had been like a fast food drive through, so easy and accessible. He’d hardly had to stop the truck. The road trips were becoming fewer and further between the last couple of years. Arthritis was setting in, so bad some days he was completely unable to get out of bed. He hated these days; relying solely on Tomika to fetch everything and care for him was the reason she was around, but being forced to spend great unbroken stretches of time with her drove him to the edge of agitation.
She talked so much, was part of the problem. And she continued to wish he would do the same. This, despite their years of marriage indicating in conclusive terms that her husband was not--indeed, could not be--a talker. He had vocal cords, that was true. And he was able to formulate simple words and phrases when the need be. But the Dunder Chief was not entirely human, and the parts that were did not include a proclivity for speech. He was intelligent enough, but in the way of the wolf, or bear ... or monster; what energies he saved in the communication department were used in concentration toward instincts and urges, physical senses, tracking and attacking. And like a drunken city man in cammo, killing deer in the U.P. to tie to the roof of his truck for the long drive home, The Dunder Chief liked to kill.
Chapter 20: Your Back Door Man
The moon was full and the air thin and brittle. Billy crept slowly along the forest floor on numb hand and feet, avoiding like a cat twigs that might snap, leaves that might crunch. The bright white moon round and still on the rise, lit the skeletal trees like a spot light; thin shadows were everywhere. Billy was a striped cat, except that he was no on the prowl; he was the hunted.
He moved as quickly as possible without sacrificing stealth. He was descending a hill, halfway down. To his right, he came upon a fallen tree, thick, big enough to hide a tiny child. Providing nobody looked there. Too risky, Billy thought, and kept going.
Suddenly, behind him somewhere in the silent night, he heard breathing. A low grunt, up the hill. Then the snap of a branch.
Billy froze, not letting a breath out. Slowly, he turned his small head and looked up the hill, behind him. He could see nothing but blackness where the hill made a backdrop for the trees. Up top, the stick-like trunks made a messy crew cut, outlined in the moonlight along the ridge, where the ground began to descend. He listened hard, but heard nothing. Then he noticed a shape in those trees on the crest that did not look like tree. It was low to the ground, a hunched silhouette. Maybe a deformed tree trunk, Billy though, or two trees merged there as one. He relaxed a little, letting out his breath, and then the shape howled and charged at him, down the hill.
Crunching and gaining speed, breathing heavy, the Dunder Chief came flying, thick padded feet not bothered by the sharpness of a cold forest floor.
Billy shot forward, then up and back, to the fallen tree. He had about ten second before the Dunder Chief would reach the spot he’d been at, and no chance to outrun him. Billy bet on the stomping noises to cover his own, and dove down close to the trunk, digging frantically with his miniscule hands at the leaves, twigs, and dirt next to it, and wedged his little body under it.
Six seconds left. A growl of pure animal rage filled the night air. The Dunder Chief pounded closer.
Billy pulled in the loosened ground cover, almost completely concealing his small frame beneath the curve of the truck. He sucked in his breath, and waited.
The Dunder Chief thundered past the log, then stopped. Sniffed the air in all directions. Billy could see him, if he opened his eyes, through a narrow slit between the trunk and a pack of leaves. His heart beat hugely, thumping loudly enough to be heard; he hoped not from where his father stood, ten feet away. He closed his eyes; the hairy, gnarled shape was too scary to watch, poking around, looking for him. Billy prayed for help.
Chapter 23: Here’s What You Gotta Do
Watching him get the hammer out of the trunk, Billy knew that the guy in the loud car was drunk. He’d seen it enough to know, and could pick up on monsters pretty well, too. This man had some monster blood. And that was reason enough to kill him, though the car is what Billy was after. It didn’t feel good to do wrong; in fact, for Billy there was physical pain associated with being mean. Killing someone was going to be especially rough. But he had to get out of here, and God or someone had just dropped a chariot out of the sky for him.
The Dunder Chief was on his tail.
Billy hunted around for a stick of sufficient strength to stab a man’s throat, found one, and sharpened it to a rough point against a series of rocks. He didn’t have to worry about being quiet because the man’s stereo was extremely loud, playing music that made Billy feel afraid. When the weapon was crafted, he picked up a large rock (large to him, which was about hamburger sized), crouched down low in the brush, and chucked the rock at trunk of the Nova.
What the fuck! Barry whipped his head around fast enough to bring on a wave of nausea that wasn’t due for another couple of hours.
You don’t fuck with the Nova, I don’t care if you’re mother fucking nature herself. Barry whipped open the door and stamped a work-booted foot onto the dirt. By the time he was standing, he realized a little bit of the stupidity of his action, because what the hell was he going to do, punch out the might Oak for dropping an acorn on his car? But it sure as hell seemed like more than an acorn dropping. It sure as hell seemed more ‘on purpose’ than some random act of nature. In fact, Barry thought with his shoulders hunching, it had seemed very much on purpose, and that was what was really pissing him off. Remember, Barry was very drunk. Not, frankly, that it mattered much at this particular moment, because Barry took everything personally anyway. He was no goddamned idiot, that was for sure. He knew when people were fucking with him, and he, for one, was not going to take it. Not that it necessarily applied in this circumstance, he thought, looking around at the grey fall scenery, going dim already at only 4:45 p.m. One-tracked from the Jack, the urge to piss took over the reigns of Barry’s focus, and he looked around for a suitable tree. While he unzipped his pants on an undeserving Pine, Bea cruised by at a steady forty-five miles per hour.
Chapter 24: I’m Happy To Be
Billy’s Dad turned to the log his tiny son was wedged under, smelling him before recognition settled in that he’d found his target. Billy was slowly, sickeningly warmed by the urine escaping his tiny bladder through his little organ and soaking into his small corduroy overalls. Oh, please, please, please, please. Miss Morgan, please make him look away; please let something happen so he goes away and doesn’t find me here (Miss Morgan had been a teacher’s aid in Billy’s kindergarten class last year, and through a mysterious series of storytelling events wherein Billy came in late and thought that Miss Morgan had been talking directly to the students, and not reciting poems, which she was, Billy came to believe that she had the direct ear of God, and ever since prayed to her for guidance and help). He sucked in his breath, refusing to breathe out in the belief (correctly so) that his father could smell his very insides in every exhale.
The Dunder Chief froze, sniffing the air in furious nose wiggles. He’d lost the scent. He let loose a howl of frustration, low and grating and full of bass, vibrating the hairs in Billy’s ears. Billy squinched his face up against the tickling itch, still holding his breath. His father stepped in closer to him.
The Dunder Chief was out of control. Had been since young Toby Crane, that fatty, luscious meal of two weeks ago. Perhaps it was old age, perhaps it was the preservatives and chemicals in this modern food. Either way, he wasn’t thinking straight; had lost the shrewd edge, keen insight, that had kept him alive an flourishing for over seventy-two years. And now, for the first time, he was out to destroy his own little son. The only child he’d fathered in his life, and a severe disappointment at that. Billy was a frail, mouse of a boy, hardly deserving of life, let alone food or affection. And the crazed frenzy that had taken over his already demented as shit fucking father was proving fatal. He’d never hunted him down this far before. During his father’s wild fits, Billy had always been able to skitter away into the forest, avoiding the rage that his mother so readily took.
But today it was different. Why was his dad following him? What was going on? Where was his mother? Why hadn’t she stopped her husband from coming after him like this? She was the only one who could slow him down when he got like this, mostly by absorbing the rage herself. Billy wished for the trillionth time that he’d been born in some other place, to some other people. Why did he deserve this? His mother hardly noticed him, and his father, well, Billy let himself think the reality for the first time: his father ate children. What the hell!? Now that he was six, that guilt of what Billy knew bore down on him freshly every day, tearing at his frail skin from the drama of its weight.
And it seemed to be getting worse. His dad eating kids, that is. He couldn’t remember exactly the first time he’d ever known it, or seen--it kind of blurred into the background of life like family patterns tend to, only standing out in relief once conscious awareness looks at them in comparison to other families, other children’s fathers--but it had definitely been increasing over the last year or more. In kindergarten, Billy had been able to put what his father did out of his mind more, like his mom did. He just sort of blanked out during those times when his dad was away for a week or more at a time, and he did his very best not to notice the telltale signs upon his return--the little shoes in his truck, or, worse, tiny finger nails stuck in his matted hair.
But then, this year, in first grade, Billy’d lost a classmate, and he knew where she went. It was more than an educated guess, too--he’d seen his dad with her in the shed out back. Just like he’d seen him with that kid two weeks ago, too. Billy did not want to see that stuff, but he was so flipped out at the reality of it, at seeing his suspicions confirmed in stark red and white, that he’d been mesmerized both times he stumbled upon his father in the shed with those kids.
And now, it was him. He’d never imagined that his father might kill him. Hurt him, yes. Of course. Billy knew the feel of a wall racing toward his skull at blinding speed, and yellow--nailed toes striking the small of his back to slam him face first into the floor. But now, this, these recent developments. He did not want to know whether his father would eat him. Because it was not looking good.
Chapter 26: She Keeps Naggin' At You Night And Day
“Honeeeeeeeey!” Tomika’s off key shriek scattered out from the behind the shack and rained jagged pieced down onto the delicate ear drums of Billy, frozen stiff from fear and cold under the log, and those of his father’s--thick and waxy--stopping him in his path toward the boy. The Dunder Chief cocked his head to listen. “Pleeeeeeease. Come HOME!” He grunted.
The Dunder Chief stomped his beastly foot. Ice cream sounds good, he thought. He would go back, eat the ice cream that Tomika would fix him; it always helped ease the craving for children. For young flesh and blood and bones. He sniffed the air once more; he had been close to finding Billy. Why was he chasing him? It was so hard to remember things lately, to put events into any kind of sequence. It used to be so simple, life. Each day was a following of instinct, no thought required. But it had gotten harder somewhere along the line, just where or when he wasn’t sure. Like he wasn’t sure of so many things.
The Dunder Chief sighed, breathe puffing out in a horizontal chimney plume of acrid frozen air. Winter was coming. Winter was so cold; it used to stimulate him, create a rise of excitement for the upcoming challenge of winter hunts, but now, it reminded him plainly that ice cream was waiting at home.
He turned from his hidden son, vaguely wondering if the boy would join him at home for ice cream, and started up the hill. When Tomika howled for him a third time, he howled back in reply and picked up his pace. At the top of the hill, already he’d forgotten his intent, and wandered into the tool shed, thinking he’d look for something to jimmy the back door step up, which had been slowly caving in for several months. By the time his wife found him in the shed half an hour later, he had forgotten that plan as well, and was hammering nails to the floor.
Tomika shuddered. Things were getting worse. And what was a woman to do with a Dunder Chief in advancing stages of Alzheimer’s disease?
Chapter 28: Concrete Shoes, Cyanide, TNT
And so it was that two childhood friends, racing northward in a late 80s Dodge custom van with a carpeted bed in back, came upon a small boy--a miniscule boy, really--wandering the side of a cold, early morning upper Michigan country road, barefoot and dazed, dragging a bloody sharpened stick along the gravel. Bleary–eyed from a couple hours’ driving and nursing fresh coffees from the Clark state a ways back, Samantha and Tom almost didn’t see Billy until they had passed him.
But he saw them; he’d been praying for them non-stop all night. Had worked up a little chant about it in his mind, to the rhythm of his feet patting loose gravel stones, and the background snare of the stick dragging along behind him. He was petrified that his father would find him before help did--before Samantha and Tom did. But that great author in the sky had put it into Billy’s brain that it was time, finally and only, to make a run for it. Things were getting worse at home; there was no doubt about it anymore. Not since last night in the woods, when his father had almost found him under the log. What would he have done to Billy? Billy did not know, and that’s why he had to make a break for it. The Dunder Chief had been getting sloppy, acting out of character, unpredictable. Billy had never worried before about being eaten, but this time, there did not seem to be any other conclusion to draw.
And his mother: it’s not like he could count on her to protect him. Since he was old enough to remember, she had turned a blind eye to the Dunder Chief taking out rages on Billy; had, in fact, developed a practice of encouraging it so that she had a calmer, more attentive husband to look after her. She didn’t give a shit for Billy, and he knew it. He also knew about the kids she’d had before she married his dad, and how once in a while one or two used to come to visit. And how a certain memory of his father’s ugly, bloody face, and a screaming half sister, and Tomika sitting on the back porch smiling into the forest for an hour was kept just out of conscious reach by his kind psyche. So no, mommy dearest was a useless non-resource in Billy’s knapsack of life.
Last year, he had tried the kindly adult route for help, and wrote the nice lady from the school lunchroom a note that said something along the lines of help me, my dad is crazy and eats kids and shits in the house on occasion. But his literary capacities what they were, Billy couldn’t be sure just what came across in the note, and cursed with his father’s vocal cord arrangement that allowed only for grunts and howls, but no speech, he’d been unable to clarify things when the authorities asked. So Billy had been sent to a nut house--kid version, of course, which mean even less efforts to uphold appearances of care, dignity, and treatment--for seven and a half months (the explanation, of course, to why he’d abandoned his play ground for so long, but sadly was unable to communicate to its rusty and broken down self).
Anyway, after the madness (even for his house) of being hunted down, Billy didn’t bother going back even for his favorite mold (a new and particularly friendly looking patch on a collection of cherry pits in a baby food jar; he would miss it dearly, and hoped they all wouldn’t suffer too much as they died without him); he just took off running once he heard the door to the tool shed slam when his father went back up for ice cream (improbably ending up in the tool shed, but Billy was beyond trying to figure out these mad, nonsensical linear patterns of late). He ran first deep into the woods, toward the thickest parts always, where his tiny frame could scramble underneath and between dense brush, and would be hard to follow.
He knew it was very unlikely that the Dunder Chief would follow him that night, would even think to come back out after him. Probably, he would not remember it having ever happened in the first place, so scattered were his thought patterns and actions these days. But when the prospect of having your beastly father’s skanky breath engulf you as jagged tartar–encrusted teeth bear down to rip a chunk of your back out, or snap off a leg at the knee, Billy found that you don’t take any chances. A person tends to act out in accordance with such worst case scenarios when they are, though remote, indeed possible.
So he had run all night. Desperate for a plan, a sign, some help. Early this morning, he’d passed a farm, complete with house and people, and considered going there for help. But it just seemed too risky. What if he was still too close to home? What if they knew where he lived, and took him back there? Or to the police station, who would wind up delivering him either back to his crazier than normal child–eating father, or to the nut house with the evil night attendants who liked to poke the littlest kids for fun? No way, not risking it, he’d though, and passed on by. It was then that he realized there was some force driving him, or leading him--something in his gut that was partly responsible for his having ran this time. And it promised safety, permanent safety, if he could just get far enough away. In time.
So Billy pressed on not stopping to sleep, once to poop and once to tinkle on some ferns. And behind him, regularly, were crunches and crackles, heavy breathing sounds and grunts, that sounded like, could be, the Dunder Chief on his tail. Almost catching up. Hungry and crazy. Then, around four forty–five in the dimming afternoon, he’d heard cars. A road. And decided to check it out. Getting to a city seemed like a good idea; more than that, the road seemed like the right idea. That’s when Barry had squealed in backwards to a small clearing fifty or so feet from Billy, and sat, waiting out Bea in the Nova.
The Nova. To Billy, it was clearly a chariot from God, and he had to give it a try to get out of here.
Being the son of a maniacal beast–human had its advantages. There were times when Billy did something and only afterward wondered how he knew to do it, or how he could have figured it out. Fashioning the stick into a sturdy, piercing–sharp weapon was one of those times. He sat hunched in the brush, watching Barry, waiting for the right opportunity, gripping his spear tightly, and only then thought to wonder how he’d come up with such a plan and fine craftsmanship out of the blue.
Watching Barry, he flinched against the curdling of his stomach lining: the extreme sensitivity of which he was comprised was railing against the survival instinct at the idea of killing a man. Hot, soft tears cut paths of fresh skin in the dirt on Billy’s cheeks. Oh, he did not want to kill this man, to make him suffer. He reached his left hand into his pants pocket and fondled the words--they were the words on the letter he’d found at the playground, those girl–written words that had come to be a friend to Billy. From the crinkled paper, courage and decisiveness surged into Billy’s hand, through his elfin body, and he knew that this was part of the author’s plan. There was a rightness to the action he was about to take.
Chapter 30: The Temporary Ending
Samantha was holding little Billy on her lap in the van while Tom drove. She had his tiny toes between her palms, rubbing the freeze out them as best she could.
“Goorghhute!” Billy growled, pointing ahead.
“Tom, look out!” Samantha cried, seeing the old station wagon pulling out in front of them.
But Tom kept his foot pressed to the pedal, accelerating slightly, and did not wake up from this brief dozing off in time to stop the van from smashing into Bea’s wagon. He did wake up just in time to see Billy shoot missile-like into and through the windshield, Samantha’s face following closely. Then all blacked out.
The Dunder Chief found his son, mangled to a tender perfection and still breathing, in the ditch just in front of the Crane’s garage. And finished him off.
Chapter 31: A More Permanent Ending
“Was that a kid?” Tom asked.
“What?” Samantha answered.
“Back there; did you see a kid walking on the side of the road?” They were eleven miles outside of Dunsberg, eight miles from Toby Crane’s outskirt house.
